"Frail" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conquerors mock their captive's woe. "Whilst Cyrus triumph'd here in victor state "A brighter prospect chear'd our exil'd fate, "Our sacred walls again he bade us raise, "And to Jehovah rear the pile of praise. "Quickly these fond hopes faded from our eyes, "As the frail sun that gilds the wintry skies, "And spreads a moment's radiance o'er the plain, "Soon hid by clouds that ...
— Poems • Robert Southey
... but it was necessary to have filed intention to become a citizen. One must be either single or the head of a family; wives, therefore, could not register. For that reason we were interested in a frail young woman, a mere girl, sagging under the weight of a baby on her arm, patiently waiting her turn. She was shabbily dressed, with a trace of gentility in clothes and manner. Whether she was a widow or unmarried only the Land Office knew, but it pinched the heart ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... out, and in a way it had grown too small for the spirit within. And just as you leave off wearing your garments when they grow shabby or small, and father provides you with new things, so mother has left her weary, frail body behind and gone to God, the great and loving Father of all, where ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... stay! why bid the dead arise? Why call them back from Charon's wherry? Come, Yankee Mark, with twinkling eyes, Confuse these ghouls with something merry! Come, Kipling, with thy soldiers three, Thy barrack-ladies frail and fervent, Forsake thy themes of butchery And ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... beneath those rocks—she is actually with thee, Ab Gwilym; but she is not long with thee, for a storm comes on, and thunder shatters the rocks—Morfydd flees! Quite right, Ab Gwilym; thou hadst no need of her, a better theme for song is the voice of the Lord—the rock shatterer—than the frail wife of the Bwa Bach. Go to, Ab Gwilym, thou wast a wiser and a better man than thou wouldst fain have ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... Islands. Regarding this merely as the natural outcome of the celibate rule, I do not criticize it, but simply wish to show that the pretended sanctity of the regular clergy in the Philippines was an absurdity, and that the monks were in no degree less frail ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... cast a tragic glance upon the tin washtub on the kitchen floor. Presently she stole over, tested the water with her finger-tip, found it not unreasonably cold, dropped the night-dress from her frail shoulders, and stepped into the tub with a perfunctory shiver—a thin, overgrown child of fifteen, with pipestem limbs and every ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... baron. He is fighting a battle with his own son and daughter. Cara is the only one with whom he has no trouble. She is mild and beautiful. Her head is turned also, but in another, a more agreeable direction. She is greatly attached to him, the dear child! She is frail. He must speak to the doctor about her. Perhaps send her to Italy. With whom? With her mother? He would never permit that. The child is his. He will go himself with Cara. But in that case what will become of ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... for the expectations of this fair frail creature! How eagerly she thought of Mr. Marlow's return! how she had anticipated their meeting again! How she had calculated upon all that would be said and done during the next few weeks! The first news she received was that ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... entered the house. After the subdued rustling which ensued upon taking their seats, there was an interval of silence, shorter than usual, because it was evident that many persons would feel the promptings of the Spirit. Friend Chandler spoke first, and was followed by Ruth Baxter, a frail little woman, with a voice of exceeding power. The not unmelodious chant in which she delivered her admonitions rang out, at times, like the peal of a trumpet. Fixing her eyes on vacancy, with her hands on the wooden rail before her, and her ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... the struggle. The worst feature of the situation was that everybody thoroughly well understood that it was a mere parchment peace. Cornwallis called it "an experimental peace." It was also termed "an armistice" and "a frail and deceptive truce"; and though Addington declared it to be "no ordinary peace but a genuine reconciliation between the two first nations of the world," his flash of rhetoric dazzled nobody but himself. He was the Mr. Perker of politics, an accommodating attorney rubbing his hands and exclaiming ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... and frail women who succeeded one another in his affection three stand out from the rest with a prominence which his special favour assigned to each in turn. For ten early years it was Louise de la Baume-Leblanc (better known to fame as the Duchesse de Lavalliere) who ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... made it, to prolong that spark of celestial fire which illuminates, yet burns, this frail tenement; but I see no such horror in a "dreamless sleep," and I have no conception of any existence which duration would not render tiresome. How else "fell the angels," even according to your creed? They were immortal, heavenly, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... aim plunges the weapon toward the monster's heart. Both hunters now seize their paddles and push away for their lives, for the infuriated beast springs toward them, its enormous jaws extended, and often succeeds in crushing the frail canoe to splinters. The hunters, if thrown in the water, immediately dive—as the beast looks for them on the surface—and make for the shore. Their prey is soon secured, for the well-aimed harpoon has done its work, and the ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... suggest, as the result of the observation of an old man, be careful of what you write in sending them. You have seen pictures of Cupid—so healthful, so chubby and rosy, and such promise of long life. It is a mistake; I know of no greater invalid—none of the gods whose health is so frail. I have known a cold word to give him a fatal chill. I have seen him fly, never to return, from a mere scent—a cigarette breath. I have known him taken incurably ill at the bad fit of a Jersey or the set ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... led him into the general office, where he introduced him to the associate editor, Mr. White, a slender, frail little man whose hand seemed strangely cold, as if he were suffering from a chill, and whose ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... see and interpret Charley's action, and their guns were quickly turned upon his frail craft. As he drew nearer the drifting dugout and came within range, a perfect hail of bullets splashed the water into foam around him. He did not falter or hesitate, but with long clean strokes of the paddle, sent his light little craft flying towards his goal. Perhaps it was ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... "See what a lovely shell, Small and pure as a pearl, Lying close to my foot, Frail, but a work divine, Made so fairily well With delicate spire and whorl, How exquisitely minute, A miracle ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... is not at all probable when it is considered the prejudice my brother's affairs in Flanders sustained by the war. But envy and malice are self-deceivers, and pretend to discover what no one else can perceive. On this frail foundation the King raised an altar of hatred, on which he swore never to cease till he had accomplished my brother's ruin and mine. He had never forgiven me for the attachment I had discovered for my brother's interest during the time he was in ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... The best man shifts his place from the stern to the bow, and stands ready with his long-handled paddle to twist the frail boat out of reach of hidden rocks. The men's faces glow with excitement. Quicker and quicker flows the stream, breaking into little rapids, foaming round rocks, and rising in tumbling waves over the shallows. At a word from the bowman the crew redouble their efforts, the paddle shafts ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... distance rose a venerable brick building, set, as it were, in an emerald lawn, and Beulah looked only once, and knew it vas the asylum. It was the first time she had seen it since her exodus, and the long-sealed fountain could no longer be restrained. Great hot tears fell over the bent face, and the frail form trembled violently. For nearly fourteen years that brave spirit had battled, and borne, and tried to hope for better things. With more than ordinary fortitude, she had resigned herself to the sorrows that came thick and fast upon her, and, trusting in the eternal love and ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... hesitated ere venturing out upon that angry stretch of water in such a frail craft. The crooked Kennebacasis was showing its temper in no uncertain manner. Exposed to the full rake of the strong westerly wind, the waves were running high, and breaking into white-caps, threatened to engulf the reeling canoe. But the Indian was master of the situation, and steered so ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... have adored her. I endowed her with all the pride she lacked, stripped her of her virtues, her natural simple charm, and frank smile, in order to plunge her heart in our Styx of depravity that makes invulnerable, load her with our crimes, make of her the fantastical doll of our drawing-rooms, the frail being who lies about in the morning and comes to life again at night with the dawn of tapers. Pauline was fresh-hearted and affectionate—I would have had ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... can't help feeling that my promise to the mother binds me to something more than merely handing baby over to some busy matron or careless nurse in any of our overcrowded institutions. She is such a frail creature she won't trouble anyone long, perhaps, and I should like to give her just a taste of comfort, if not love, before she ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... as he aint a-denying of it. What was it as she came here for but you? Mr Wentworth, I've always had a great respect for you," said Elsworthy. "I've respected you as my clergyman, sir, as well as for other things; but you're a young man, and human nature is frail. I say again as you needn't have no fear of me. I aint one as likes to make a talk, and no more is Hayles. Give up the girl, and give me your promise, and there aint a man living as will be ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... bonds when it suits him. He has his own theory about inspiration which will not always come,—especially will not come if wine-cups overnight have been too deep. All this has ever been odious to me, as being unmanly. A man may be frail in health, and therefore unable to do as he has contracted in whatever grade of life. He who has been blessed with physical strength to work day by day, year by year—as has been my case—should pardon deficiencies caused by sickness or infirmity. I may in this respect have been a little hard on ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... going to Europe. The young wife's convalescence had been tedious and it was a very frail little figure which clung to Evadne the evening before they started. They had pleaded with her to go with them. "Give up this toilsome work which is overtaxing your strength," Reginald had said, as they sat together one evening in the twilight, "and make your home with us. ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... be hopeless to sway the mind of Lady Ogram? If that were deemed impossible, they had but to wait. Lady Ogram would not live till the autumn. To be sure, she looked better since her return to Rivenoak, but she was frail, oh very frail, and sure to go off at a moment's notice. As ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... tens of thousands of tons in weight, its impact shook the frail atoll like an earthquake. Captain ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... placing the frail bones of the infant in a bit of sail cloth, he examined the skull minutely. Then he called Professor Porter to his side, and the two argued in low tones for ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... other hand, how horrible it is, and what a fearful view of frail human nature is opened for a searching mind to observe that a man, who professes to have abandoned the pleasures of existence, to have broken through the very first law of nature, to have separated himself from his kind, and to have assumed perfection and infallibility, the attributes of his ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... house at last, and, going in at the doorless entrance, climbed patiently the wooden stairs that ran straight up from it in complete darkness. On the topmost landing—a frail wooden structure that creaked beneath his feet—he paused, and rapped twice ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... begin with trouble here, Our life is but a span, And cruel death is always near, So frail a thing is man. ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... case—or, on the other hand, of their producing only a haphazard series of unrelated sounds, if such were the fact—would bring to the decision of the question the overwhelming force of indirect evidence. But such an assortment the author has not been able to find. Bamboo is a frail and perishable material. Of the two specimens of kaekeeke tubes found by him in the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum one was cracked and voiceless; and so the testimony of its surviving partner was ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... chance-directed, Fell on the spot, and then a sapling sprung, From driving winds and beating storms protected By that kind Heaven which guards the frail ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... death, and arrest the flowing river in its course. She is also a child of the air, and with the swiftness of the chamois she can reach the snow-covered mountain tops, where the boldest mountaineer has to cut footsteps in the ice to ascend. She will sail on a frail pine-twig over the raging torrents beneath, and spring lightly from one iceberg to another, with her long, snow-white hair flowing around her, and her dark-green robe glittering like the waters of the ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... title of the Duc d'Orleans, which he bore when his father was still Duc d'Orleans, before he became King of France as "Louis Philippe." Apparently the son continued "Chartres" to his intimate friends.] and deservedly, for he was so noble and good. All our anxiety now is to hear how poor dear frail Helene (the Duchesse d'Orleans) has borne this too dreadful loss. She loved him so, and he ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... of every calling; students in abundance; a sprinkling of Sikhs and Dogras from the lines. Some form of hypnotism,—was it? Perhaps. Even Roy could not listen unmoved, when the spirit shook the frail creature like a gust of wind and the hollow chest-notes vibrated with appeal or command. Such men—and India is full of them—are spiritual dynamos. Who can calculate their effect on an emotional race? And they no longer confine their influence to things ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the boy, and I now resolved to enter the canoe and attempt it, as the only gleam of hope left to us. My party of five embarked in our frail canoe; Abraham first, I next, Matthew after me, the boy at the steering paddle, and Abraham's wife sitting in the bottom, where she might hold on while it continued to float. For a mile or more we got away nicely under the ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... canoe so he could watch the other without cramping his neck, for he saw that something like a struggle was taking place, the masked man seemingly holding some object helpless in the bottom of the frail craft. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... water below them; then, lifting a bow with an arrow, drew it to the head. Just then Oliver, having found his voice, began to sing the first air which came into his head. The maiden stood balancing herself in her frail bark, motionless as a statue, listening with eager ears to the notes which reached her, then, slowly withdrawing her arrow, let it fall with her bow into the canoe. Oliver sang on, observing the effect of his music, and beckoned as he had been directed. She quickly understood him ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... body was taken up, and placed in a chest, near her first husband's tomb. "There," says Dart, "it hath ever since continued to be seen, the bones being firmly united, and thinly clothed with flesh, like scrapings of tanned leather." This awful spectacle of frail mortality was at length removed from the public gaze into St. Nicholas's Chapel, and finally deposited under the monument of Sir George Villiers, when the vault was made for the remains of Elizabeth Percy, Duchess of Northumberland, in ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... occupation of the British Isles by Man, have never carried their epoch so high as the time when Britain and Gaul were joined by an isthmus. On the contrary, they all argue as if the islands were as insular as they are at present, and attribute to the first settlers the construction and management of some frail craft—rude, of course, but still a seaworthy piece of mechanism—after the fashion of the boats of Gaul or Germany; and this is the reasonable view of ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... light wooden frame and osier work lined with leather, after the model of those used in the Channel among the Britons and subsequently by the Saxons, to be prepared in the camp and transported in waggons to the point where the bridges had stood. On these frail barks the other bank was reached and, as it was found unoccupied, the bridge was re-established without much difficulty; the road in connection with it was thereupon quickly cleared, and the eagerly-expected ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... and run it down in packs, keen eyes, sharp ears, acute perceptions, will be far less important than endurance in running. The deer, under the new conditions, will need coarser and more powerful limbs, and a larger chest; it will be an advantage to be rough and big, instead, of frail and inconspicuous, and the ears and eyes need not be so large. The old refinements will mean weakness and death; any variation along the line of size and coarseness will be advantageous. Slight and delicate ...
— Text Book of Biology, Part 1: Vertebrata • H. G. Wells
... break Diana's law, Or some frail china jar receive a flaw; Or stain her honour or her new brocade, Forget her prayers or miss a masquerade; Or lose her heart or necklace at a ball, Or whether heaven has doom'd ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... beset with visitors at the house; she was annoyed by men who stopped and claimed acquaintance with her on the streets; she received many gifts, flowers, fruit, jewelry, and all the other tempting sweet nothings which it is thought bewitch the heart of frail woman. But they had no effect upon her. Only goodness seemed to cling to her, and evil fell far off from her. You may set two plants side by side in the same soil—one will draw only bitterness and poison from the earth; while the other ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... ETHEL standing by table; a beautiful but rather frail girl of sixteen; opening a package ...
— The Naturewoman • Upton Sinclair
... business comes to us. But we learn a great deal; much of it along rather surprising lines. I learned yesterday, for example, that the scandal which has been suspected to exist between the fair but probably frail Mazie Dupont and her manager is undoubtedly a matter ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... have broke his heart too! from his lips Have dashed joy's last poor lingering drop, and shown him, His only prop was frail as all the former! Could I but think he felt like common parents, That when he found my fault, affection died, Then I were blest! then I alone should suffer, And when his hatred broke my heart, could seek Some lone sad place, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... help being cheered up and laughing, too. She seemed to amuse Mr. Brand and he was very kind and took us all for a ride in his auto. And, oh, Mildred, you should have seen how lovely he was with my poor, frail mother! He insisted that she must go, that it would do her good, and he carried her in his arms out to the auto and back, and was as tender and careful with her as a son could ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... with Ministers on account of the wine which circulated at their tables. 'Prince Eugene,' he writes, 'dines with the Secretary to-day with about seven or eight general officers or foreign Ministers. They will be all drunk I am sure.' Pope's frail body could not tolerate excess, and he is said to have hastened his end by good living. His friend Fenton 'died of a great chair and two bottles of port a day.' Parnell, who seems to have been ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... washed in the blood of the Lamb?) The Saints smiled gravely and they said: "He's come." (Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?) Walking lepers followed, rank on rank, Lurching bravoes from the ditches dank, Drabs from the alleyways and drug fiends pale— Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail:— Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath, Unwashed legions with the ways of Death— (Are you washed in the ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... sort of happiness, perhaps, has never been very agreeable to her and moreover it is always with her. She knows it well, she has analyzed it; and what slight but terrible evidence comes from these circumstances to prove to an intelligent husband that this frail creature argues and reasons, instead of being carried away ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... concomitant gentleman, your friend here, would be pleased to take my stool. Indeed, I always use a chair, but the back of it, if I may, be permitted the use of a small portion of jocularity, was as frail as the fair sect: it went home yisterday to be mended. Do, sir, condescind to be sated. Upon my reputation, Squire, I'm sorry that I have not accommodation for you, too, sir; except one of these hassocks, which, ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... several writings one and the same Holy Spirit, now sanctifying a chosen vessel, and fitting it for the reception of heavenly truths proceeding immediately from the mouth of God, and elsewhere working in frail and fallible men like ourselves, and like ourselves instructed by God's word and laws?" The first Christian martyr had the form and features of an ordinary man, nor are we taught to believe that these features were miraculously transfigured into superhuman symmetry; but HE BEING FILLED ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... gentlemanliness was unnecessary, the uprush of relief should have swept away all lesser considerations, flooded down all doubts. All was settled again in a trice, as by a miracle: the miraculous agent here being, not the Deity (as she vaguely suspected), but only the Demon Rum, he who had taught the frail lad Dalhousie to be so mistrustful of ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... I know, How one like me can love you so. It was a strange, strange thing. Love came So like a swift, devouring flame And burned my frail, fair-weather boat And left me on the waves afloat, With nothing but a broken spar. The distant shores seem very far; I cannot reach them, so I sink. God will forgive my sins, I think, Because I die for love, like One The good Book ...
— Poems of Sentiment • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... master's cloak. As I saw Lord Castleton step into the street, and wrap himself in his costly mantle lined with sables, I observed, more than I had while he was in the room, the enervate slightness of his frail form, and the more than paleness of his thin, joyless face; and then, instead of envy, I felt compassion for the owner of all this pomp and grandeur,—felt that I would not have exchanged my hardy health and easy humor ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... He took the frail little blossom and smiled at it half quizzically: "It's funny," he said awkwardly, "your giving me this. You know, it's what you made me think of, the first time I saw you,—a wild rose. Didn't ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... which prevailed there both for and against Napoleon, but without the name of the Bourbons ever being pronounced. They were almost unknown to the new generation, forgotten by many of the old, and feared by the conventionalists; at that time they possessed only the frail support of the coteries of the Faubourg St. Germain, and some remains of the emigration. But as it is certain that the emigrants could offer only vain demonstrations and wishes in support of the old family of our Kings, they did little to assist the restoration ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... to be followed by a morrow of still greater festival, when their sultan and their god took to himself this stranger beauty as a wife. Doubtless, too, he would soon weary of her, and they would be called together to see her cast from some topmost tower and hear her frail bones break on the cruel rocks below, or—as had happened to the last queen—to watch her writhe out her life in the pangs of poison upon a charge of sorcery. It was indeed a night of festival, a night filled full of promise of rich joys ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... ourselves in the wide and desolate Antarctic Ocean, in a latitude exceeding eighty-four degrees, in a frail canoe, and with no provision but the three turtles. The long polar winter, too, could not be considered as far distant, and it became necessary that we should deliberate well upon the course to be pursued. There were six or seven islands ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 4" was long and slim, and had an inner air-bag to compensate for the contraction of the hydrogen gas. This air-ship had one feature that was entirely new; the aeronaut had arranged for himself, not a secure basket to stand in, but a frail, unprotected bicycle seat attached to an ordinary bicycle frame. The cranks were connected with the starting-gear ...
— Stories of Inventors - The Adventures Of Inventors And Engineers • Russell Doubleday
... trees and thick shrubs told him that behind lay Withersby Hall. This, intuition told him, was the home of Antoinette Brellier, the girl of the train, of the wreck, and now of his dreams. Then his thoughts turned to her. Gad! to bring a frail, delicate little butterfly to a place like this was like trying to imprison a ray of sunshine in a ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... to row now, and his breath was coming in great choking sobs of sheer exhaustion when at last he pulled the senseless form of Ruth Allaire to the deck of the Nagasaki and drew her within the frail shelter ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... but yet a faint central ring remained. In others was a centre of chalk, beautifully white, that crumbled between the fingers to the finest powder; some consisted of chalk and brown earth, in various quantities, and some others had detained a few frail portions of their woody fibres, the spaces between which were ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... the king of the country had insisted on giving him one of his daughters as a wife, but that he had refused the honour because he was too old and too frail. The simple-minded shepherd, who believed his story implicitly, asked him, 'Do you think the king of the country would give ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... came on to the scene suddenly and with much uproar, in a way that would have made his fortune in a transpontine drama. I shall always regret I have not got that man's portrait, for I cannot do him justice with ink. He dashed up on to the verandah, smote the frail form of Mr. Glass between the shoulders, and flung his own massive one into a chair. His name was Obanjo, but he liked it pronounced Captain Johnson, and his profession was a bush and river trader on ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... long been in the fatal toils of that dread destroyer, heart disease, and suddenly, before she had found opportunity for securing her little daughter further, as she had since begun to realize it was needful to do, she was seized with a paroxysm that snapped the frail ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the whole intriguing clique arrayed against me, determined me, if feasible, to regain the favor of Elvira, and have the ceremony performed as soon as possible. This, Ella, I know you think, and I am ready to admit it, was wrong—very wrong; but I make no pretensions to be other than a frail mortal, liable to all the errors appertaining thereto; and were this is the only sin to be laid to my charge, my conscience were far less troublesome ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... and be unable to maintain a proper position of her limbs and body, so soon as her horse starts into a trot, she runs the risk of being tossed about on the saddle, like the Halcyon of the poets in her frail nest,— ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... word? Worse and worse! Or possibly you distrusted the entertainment of a solitary bachelor on a desert island? But I must prove that you did me an injustice." He pointed to a goodly hamper on the beach and to a frail or carpenter's basket from which half a dozen bottles protruded their necks, topped with red and green seals. "As proprietor of Mortallone—you will forgive my laying stress on it—I may surely claim the right to do the honours. Stay a moment, my good ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... the woods, or of "shooting the rapids." Naturally we chose the more dangerous course. Shooting the rapids has often been described, and I will not repeat the description here. It is needless to say that I drove my frail bark through the boiling rapids, over the successive waterfalls, amid rocks and vicious eddies, and landed, half a mile below with whitened hair and a boat half full of water; and that the guide was upset, and boat, contents, and man were strewn ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... alarmed not for himself, but for his wife, who was very frail and delicate in health, and ill fitted to ...
— Rollo in Holland • Jacob Abbott
... career in the Mexican war had been a notable one. Allied to Zachary Taylor by marriage, a West Pointer by training, a Southern planter by occupation, he was a typical defender of slavery as it existed. Davis was as slender and frail as Douglas was compact and sinewy. Like Lincoln, his mind grasped great principles, while Douglas was ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... say, that frail, delicate man began to recover his strength, work came back to his shop, and everything grew brighter around him. And, as an additional reward from Heaven, he was animated by a new zeal for the Holy Souls, for he not ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... casting to him kind glances and smiles, while her admirers were fawning upon her, and they all, like serpents, were cleverly gliding by the various little tables, chairs, screens, flower-stands—a storehouse full of beautiful and frail things, scattered about the room with a carelessness equally dangerous to them and to Foma. But when he walked there, the rugs did not drown his footsteps, and all these things caught at his coat, trembled and fell. Beside the piano stood a sailor made of bronze, whose hand was lifted, ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... 'fragile' and 'frail,' 'intension' and 'intention,' 'providential' and 'prudential,' and many other groups of ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... two months of wandering very well; she had that power of resistance to fatigue which one discovers here and there in some quite frail-looking women with surprise—like a state of possession by a remarkably stubborn spirit. Don Pepe—the old Costaguana major—after much display of solicitude for the delicate lady, had ended by conferring upon her the name of the "Never-tired Senora." ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... took her knitting to the fire, and before she began to ply the needles, looked thoughtfully at her hands. They had been soft and shapely before the days of toil. A frail but comely woman she was, with pale face, and dark eyes, ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... gazing at herself, at the rich folds of her black silk gown made heavy with crape, and at the frail gossamer she carried on her head, and which, as she came on, let its long appendages float out like pennons in her wake. Emily had such a high, almost fantastic notion of feminine dignity (fantastic because it left ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... rising tide: and where the lifelong assiduity of older friends had failed to eradicate a morbid, ruinous, and fatal thirst, it was presumptous if not ridiculous to imagine that the task could be compassed by a frail creature with heart and nerves of wax. But the whole scene was now beginning to have an interest for me more personal and more serious than I have yet given hint of. The constant fret and fume of this life of baffled ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... a moment And nothing did he say; But Argyle's cheek grew deadly pale, And he turned his eyes away. The painted frail one by his side, She shook through every limb, For warlike thunder swept the streets, And hands were clenched at him, And a Saxon soldier cried, aloud, Back coward, from thy place! For seven long years thou hast not dared To ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... Yes, indeed, the Sex is frail. But the first time a Woman is frail, she should be somewhat nice methinks, for then or never is the time to make her Fortune. After that, she hath nothing to do but to guard herself from being found out, and she ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... thought while the busy machine rattled down the cloth seams of Jane Restless's new fall suit. The low bent head with its soft wavy hair held her earnest attention, the bending figure, so lissome, yet so frail as it swayed to the motion of the treadle. She watched and watched, waiting for the work to be finished, her heart aching for the woman whom she knew ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... making of a raft after the ship struck, and almost forced us to save our lives by risking them upon it. The other passengers refused to go, and for a long time we hesitated, but Ben Benson was so determined, that at last we trusted every thing to his frail craft, which, alas! was all of our brave vessel that ever reached ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... ahead of us with a fiery and angry glow, while the clouds swept by rapidly overhead, and every now and then a flash of lightning and a loud roar of thunder made us anxious to find ourselves on board a more seaworthy craft than the frail boat in which we floated. We had no firearms with us, for the pirates had carried away or thrown overboard all they found on board the schooner, so we had no means of making a night signal. However, as there was still a little light remaining, ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... unbelieving one to know What words of love were impotent to show. Time made my heart, aforetime, meekly bow Unto the mastery of love; but now Time hath, at last, revealed love to be Far other than it once appeared to me; And Time the frail foundation hath made clear Whereon I purposed, once, my love to rear— To wit, your beauty, which but served as sheath To hide the ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... most mysterious. There was that in her face, as she clung on to her mother's hand, which seemed to say: "O mother, I understand it all, and far more; if I might only talk to you in the language of heaven,—but my words are like my little legs, frail and uncertain of their footing, and, while I think all your strange grown-up thoughts, I can only talk of toys and dolls. Mother, father's blood as well as yours is in my veins, and so I understand you both. Poor little ...
— The Worshipper of the Image • Richard Le Gallienne
... shells like rosy foam Borne from the caverns of the deep, Frail playthings drifted from the home Of timeless, ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... inevitable reaction was setting in. Oh, if he were only a year older so that he could have communicated to us by speech his feelings and his wants! His little body, which stood the long sickness with such fortitude, got frail. His bright eyes, high forehead and round cheeks remained, however, to defy the waste of the disease. The parson came and uttered words of encouragement. "Symptoms of death," he said, pointing to the sick-bed (and he was no novice in such matters) "were very far from ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... flask had been flung watching over that past which contained a future; the whirlwind breathing kindly on it; the currents directing the frail waif across the fathomless wastes of water; the caution exercised by seaweed, the swells, the rocks; the vast froth of the abyss, taking under its protection an innocent child; the wave imperturbable as a conscience; chaos re-establishing ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... experience to realize the embarrassment of Brown's position. The terms were not easy for him. In a ministry of twelve members he and two colleagues would be the only Liberals. The leadership of Upper Canada, and in fact the real premiership, because Tache was frail and past his prime, would rest with Macdonald. The presidency of the Executive Council, which was offered him, unless joined to the office of prime minister, was of no real importance. Some party friends throughout the country {40} would misunderstand, and more would scoff. He had parted ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... would snuggle close together under the same coverlet. Some nights they would be wakened by the uproar from the drunken sailors in the tavern, and hear the angry words of their mother, or the slaps she would rain on impudent cheeks. More than once the frail partition of their bedroom had threatened to give way as some staggering body fell against it. But then they would go to sleep again, with the carefree innocence of children, with no suspicions, ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... has gone before. Achilles, the fierce hero of the earlier story, is outshone by his victim, Hector of the great and gentle heart. The crowning word of praise, after father, mother, wife have uttered their lament, is spoken by the frail woman whose sin had brought ruin on Hector and his people: "If any other haply upbraided me in the palace halls, then wouldst thou soothe such with words, and refrain them by the gentleness of thy spirit and by thy ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... on their red sand-stone doorstep in the late afternoon. Great tranquillities were all about them in land and sea and sky. Silvery gulls were soaring over them. The horizons were laced with long trails of frail, pinkish clouds. The hushed air was threaded with a murmurous refrain of minstrel winds and waves. Pale asters were blowing in the sere and misty meadows ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... part of the public. The idea prevalent at our seaside resorts that a land breeze brings swarms of mosquitoes from far inland is based on the supposition that these insects are capable of long-sustained flight, and a certain amount of battling against the wind. This is an error. Mosquitoes are frail of wing; a light puff of breath will illustrate this by hurling the helpless creature away, and it will not venture on the wing again for some time after finding a safe harbor. The prevalence of mosquitoes during a land breeze is easily explained. It is ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... matter. It should be said, in justice to the New Haven colonists, though they were the most opulent of the New England planters, save the wealthy settlers of Narragansett, that money of all kinds was scarce, and that the Indian money, wampum-peag, being made of a comparatively frail sea-shell, was more easily disfigured and broken than was metal coin; and that there was little transferable wealth in the community anyway, even in "Country Pay." The broken-wampum-giver of the seventeenth century, who contributed with intent to defraud and deceive the infant ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... to her the history and sufferings of the persecuted Protestants of Europe. She was a frail, and timid girl, yet such was the depth of her piety and the fervor of her religious faith, that she often declared to me that she would prefer death to the abandonment of those heavenly principles she had embraced, which were the source of her joy and hope. ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... English flowers. Margaret and he stooped lovingly over them, and it was wonderful to see how Peter's face softened, and how gently the great rough hands, that had been all day handling smoked geese and fish, touched these frail, trembling blossoms. ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... to keep your arms. Ed, I think the pluck was all on your side. But I do hope Jim has a chance. He seems an awfully frail little fellow." ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... distinct and independent.[*] They undoubtedly foresaw that France, if subdued, would in the end prove the seat of government; and they deemed this previous protestation necessary, in order to prevent their becoming a province to that monarchy: a frail security if the event ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... watchers rather than to the passing soul itself that the wonder seems to draw most close. To stand before the veil, to know that very soon it must be lifted for the loved one to pass beyond, to wait for the glimpse of that spirit-world from which only the frail wall of mortality divides even the least spiritual, to watch as it were for the Gate of Death to open and the great Revelation to flash for one blinding moment upon the dazzled eyes that may not grasp the meaning of what they see; this is to stand for a space within ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... and fade Through some slight spell, A gleam from yonder vale, Some far blue fell; And sympathies, how frail, In ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... indifferent to anything except love. As Candace in Alexander has the crude though not unamiable naturalism of a chanson heroine, so Cressid—so even Briseida to some extent—has the characteristic of the frail angels of Arthurian legend. The cup would have spilled wofully in her husband's hand, the mantle would scarcely have covered an inch of her; but though of coarser make, she is of the same mould with the ladies of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... and when he went to the laboratory, the master always ordered extra food. He was very absent-minded, sir; but he always remembered that. He was very considerate, sir, too. He never forgot my birthday," and he broke down completely, his frail body ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... ever-increasing violence on the frail bulwark the two bodies offered to their impetuous course, and it was only a question of moments when they would both be beaten down. Grylls's knees weakening under him first, down they went, Garth uppermost; and, the water seizing them, still gripped together, they were rolled ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... when Philip, noticing how frail Peter was, hailed a car, and they rode to Grand Street, changed there and went east. Midway between the Bowery and the river, they got out and walked south for a few blocks, turned into a side street that was hardly more than an alley, and came to ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... sister, drove out for her, but she left the house with reluctance and a marked predisposition not to enjoy herself. But she forgot this when she presently beheld the young man from the East whom she had encountered on the mesa. He was standing close beside a rather frail little woman, undoubtedly his mother, who with the matrons of the town was seated near a fireplace watching the dancers. He was introduced. Later they sat out one of his numbers alone together in a corner behind some potted ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... first word of news shocked and held him breathless. Bobby, the little orphan, a frail exotic, had succumbed to the Northern winter. A cold caught in New York had developed into pneumonia, and he died on the passage. Miss Avondale, although she had received marked attention from Sir William, returned to ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... red-faced man who had nearly toppled over the little frail figure; "what you doing so far from home? They are missing you shocking in some chapel away in the hills ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... It was almost daylight the next morning when at length they found themselves driving in towards the rocks. With great difficulty they kept off, and coasted round to the very bay where Mr Martin had landed. Finding, however, that they could not get in their frail raft, they had after all, having repossessed themselves of their shirts, to swim on shore, Mr Oliver towing young Bramston, who was supported on a spar. They were almost exhausted when they landed, but, finding a shady place under a rock, they fell asleep, and awoke considerably ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... Scavani, Liguori, etc., ever been honest enough, in their works on confession, to say that the Most Holy God could never command or require woman to degrade and pollute herself and the priest in pouring in the ear of a frail and sinful mortal, words unfit even for an angel? No; they were very careful not to say so; for from that very moment, their shameless lies would have been exposed; the stupendous but weak structure of auricular confession would fall to the ground with sad ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... reason to believe that the demons who had watched him, and encouraged him in his besetting sin, laughed at this consummation of their malignant arts! If angels in heaven did not mourn at this characteristic departure of a frail spirit from its earthly tenement, one who had many of their qualities did. Heavy had been the load on Mary Pratt's heart, at the previous display of her uncle's weakness, and profound was now her grief at his having made such ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... most affected by this leave-taking was Mr. Balfour. He knew, as did the others, that that frail and emaciated figure had been one of the greatest friends that Britain had had at the most dreadful crisis in her history. He has many times told of this parting scene at Waterloo Station and always ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... a soft young fellow with a literary turn, or a genius for playing the flute, according to the laws of contrast and nature provided in those cases; and who has not heard how great, strong men have an affinity for frail, tender little women; how tender little women are attracted by great, honest, strong men; and how your burly heroes and champions of war are constantly henpecked? If Mr. Harry Warrington falls in love with a woman who is ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thrills us with their coming, They, too, braved the winter long; Then at Springtime took new leafage, Frail yet steadfast, ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... flat-bottomed scow. Shortly after leaving the American shore, a tremendous storm of thunder, lightning, rain, and hail burst over the river. The waves, crested with snowy foam which gleamed ghastly in the dim light of our lantern, threatened to engulf our frail bark. The boatman strained every nerve and muscle, but was borne a mile down the river before he made the land. That distance he had to retrace along the rugged, boulder-strewn, and log-encumbered shore. We reached the landing in a still more demoralized condition ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... not Hoodwinked with rustic marvels, I do think There are more things in the grove, the air, the flood, Yea, and the charnelled earth, than what wise man, Who walks so proud as if his form alone Filled the wide temple of the universe, Will let a frail mind say. I'd write i' the creed O' the sagest head alive, that fearful forms, Holy or reprobate, do page men's heels; That shapes, too horrid for our gaze, stand o'er The murderer's dust, and for revenge glare up, Even till the stars weep fire ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... Nora; but at the present moment he was in danger. In the barn, too, he was in much greater danger than he had been when in the safe seclusion of the Castle. It would be possible for any one to creep up to the barn at night, to push open the somewhat frail windows or equally frail door, and to accomplish that deed which had already been attempted. Nora knew well that she must act, she must do something—what, was the puzzle. Squire O'Shanaghgan was one of the most generous, open-hearted, and affectionate ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... Mr. Ramy's visits had another cause than the one Miss Mellins suggested. Had not the sight of Evelina first inspired him with a sudden solicitude for the welfare of the clock? And what charms but Evelina's could have induced him to repeat his visit? Grief held up its torch to the frail fabric of Ann Eliza's illusions, and with a firm heart she watched them shrivel into ashes; then, rising from her knees full of the chill joy of renunciation, she laid a kiss on the crimping pins of the sleeping Evelina and crept under the ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... frail (1) malicious foes, (1) Are they malicious Who do my power despise; out of frailty, or frail Vainly how long will ye oppose, out of malice? And (2) falsely calumnize! (2) That is, they ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... dimpled cheeks. She was beautiful, but her whole frame was the prey of a hereditary disease. The tears in her eyes glistened like small specks. Her balmy breath was so gentle. She was as demure as a lovely flower reflected in the water. Her gait resembled a frail willow, agitated by the wind. Her heart, compared with that of Pi Kan, had one more aperture of intelligence; while her ailment exceeded (in intensity) by three degrees the ailment ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... The warm rain that had fallen over night had dissolved the last frail bond of winter and had set the spring world free. Trees and bushes and shrubs were frosted with clinging, glistening diamonds that shimmered and gleamed in the sun, while the moist, warm earth sent up a pungent sweetness found only ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... seized the boat hooks and stretchers, and rushed upon Botello; but Juan and Alfonzo were upon the alert, and, drawing their long daggers, rushed to his defence. Never was there a more desperate conflict than on that starlit night, in that frail boat, that floated a feeble, solitary speck of humanity on the bosom of the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... drops between her reluctant lips. He then pitched the cartload of tubs, buckets, and piggins out into the road, and gathering dried leaves and pine-straw, spread them in the bottom of the cart. He stooped, lifted her frail form in his arms, and laid it on the leafy bed. Cutting a couple of hickory withes, he arched them over the cart, and gathering an armful of jessamine quickly wove it into an awning to protect her from the sun. She was quieter now, and ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... expresses himself at the close of his admired biography of Agricola: "I do not mean to censure the custom of preserving in brass or marble the shape and stature of eminent men; but busts and statues, like their originals, are frail and perishable. The soul is formed of finer elements, its inward form is not to be expressed by the hand of an artist with unconscious matter; our manners and our morals may in some degree trace the resemblance. All of Agricola that gained our love and raised our admiration still ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... to light it, darkness having fallen. Then she opened the door, and saw, in the gloom, a short, thin woman standing on the step, a woman of advanced middle-age, dressed with a kind of shabby neatness. It seemed impossible that so frail and unimportant a creature could have made such a ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... instant. Eagerness, anxiety, dread fought in his heart. He knew that any moment now he might stumble upon the evidence of the sad story which is repeated in Alaska many times every winter. It rang in him like a bell that where tough, hardy miners succumbed a frail girl would ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... noticed when he lifted the man that he was very frail and slight of build. Now he could feel that the hand that held his arm was trembling violently. It occurred to him that perhaps the man was not really hurt, but that his nerves had been upset by ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... think of that poor girl—tonight! It's dreadful." She looked into the fire that she had lit when he came in, the warm light fell upon her dark purple dress, and left her features in a warm shadow. She looked such a slight, frail thing to be troubled so. "We must follow her." Her resolution seemed magnificent. "I have no one ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... teach English. She therefore took not only the required course in Freshman Composition, but an elective in Shakespeare, and was herded with fifty others into the classroom of a young instructor fresh from Harvard. He was a frail looking young man, smooth shaven and thin, with large, light brown eyes ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... midst of one of these revolting paroxysms Spike breathed his last. A few hours later his body was interred in the sands of the shore. It may be well to say in this place, that the hurricane of 1846, which is known to have occurred only a few months later, swept off the frail covering and that the body was washed away to leave its bones among the wrecks and relics of the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... fell ill—so ill that they knew she was too frail and weak to get well and strong again. David carried her down stairs every day, and every day the burden grew lighter. She never complained, but called him her poor, dear boy, and one day she whispered that she was only his child-wife ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... of his judgments and his nervousness, he was liked, and behind his back was spoken of affectionately as Vanya. His innate refinement and readiness to be of service, his good breeding, his moral purity, and his shabby coat, his frail appearance and family misfortunes, aroused a kind, warm, sorrowful feeling. Moreover, he was well educated and well read; according to the townspeople's notions, he knew everything, and was in their eyes something like ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... beautiful home. A great trial, however, awaited her. King Louis demanded the custody of their eldest son, and little Napoleon was taken from his mother, leaving her only Louis. Louis had always been a "mother's boy," frail in health, thoughtful, grave, ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... like a drop of water lost in the immensity of the ocean; Jesus alone remained—He was the Master, the King! Had not Therese asked Him to take away her liberty which frightened her? She felt herself so weak and frail, that she wished to be for ever united to ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... trembling as they held the cards; he saw the delicate little shoulders and the poor frail neck and chest bedizened with tawdry mock jewelry and spangles; he saw the innocent young face, whose pure beauty no soil of stage paint could disfigure, with the smile still on the parted lips, but with a patient forlornness in the sad blue eyes, as if the seeing-sense ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... cold and sick with terror, but she kept her self-possession, and tried to cling to one frail straw of hope—that they might by some providential chance overlook the door of the cupboard (which was papered like the walls of the room) and pass it by. She trembled lest Oliver, hearing the tramp of his enemies' steps approaching, should attempt to make his escape ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... color. The blossoms of the multebaer, almost identical with that of the strawberry, are abundant. The humidity of the atmosphere favors floral development. All through Scandinavia one meets these bright mosaics of the soil with a sense of surprise, they are so delicate, so frail, creations of such short life, yet lovely beyond compare, born upon the verge of ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... from insult to protect, Some frail memorial still erected nigh, With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd, Implores the ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... against his position should have been a little lacking in dignity. He had not taken the decisive step through any deep compassion of utter poverty bravely borne. His had been no more than trivial pity of a young man's folly; and this was a frail thing on which to make so great a sacrifice. Yet he regretted nothing. His task of moral guardian of men and women had become impossible to him, and sooner or later he must have given it up. And there was also his family. "I must come to some ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... awful in their power opposed each other; the frail being wavering between them could by putting out its arms have touched them both. It alone wavered, for they were silent, resolute and knit in the conflict of will; they stirred not a hand nor a foot; there was only a still quivering now and then as of intense effort, ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... intention to abandon the machine, with her determination to wade! Clearly this would seem to demonstrate that there had been a breakdown, irreparable so far as frail feminine ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... upon these changes the Government evidently think they can scramble on, and on the whole it is probable that they may, though never did a Government hold office by so frail and uncertain a tenure, and upon such strange terms. A pretty correct analysis of the House of Commons presents the following result: 267 Government people, including the Irish tail; 66 Radicals, 5 doubtful, and 315 Conservatives; 4 vacant seats, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... garrison. He and his people looked upon the boats with almost superstitious horror. Their dislike was not lessened when one day the smaller schooner made her way against wind and current up to Pontiac's village, and there sent shot and shell roaring through the frail dwellings. ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... his Missouri boys than when he makes sickley romances about Joan of Arc. And certainly he never did a better piece of work than "Prince and Pauper." One seems to get at the very heart of old England in that dearest of children's books, and in its pages the frail boy king, and his gloomy sister Mary who in her day wrought so much woe for unhappy England, and the dashing Princess Elizabeth who lived to rule so well, seem to live again. A friend of Mr. Clemens' once told me that he ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... the greatest imaginative restorer of the past, the greatest historical interpreter of the soul of ancient France, was born in 1798 in Paris, an infant seemingly too frail and nervous to remain alive. His early years gave him experience, brave and pathetic, of the hardships of the poor. His father, an unsuccessful printer, often found it difficult to procure bread or fire for his household; but he resolved that ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... song was slight, But it reached to her window's height; Each verse so frail was the silken rail, From which her soul ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... the sightless man. With the fractiousness of advancing age and growing infirmity, old Philipp obstinately refused to seek the assistance of any learned leech of the country round. Brannau and Burchhausen boasted each of a chirurgic wonder, but Stroer misdoubted or defied their skill. "His frail body," he said, "was in the hands of a heavenly Providence, to which, as might best beseem, he bequeathed its guidance." Meanwhile, the perilous uncertainty of his footing, and the growing isolation of his existence, became more and more perceptible, when ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 394, October 17, 1829 • Various
... government; and his popularity with the people was, at this time, unbounded. They were perfectly content to think that the government was in the hollow of his hand; and pronounced any of his measures good before they were tried. His energy, too, was untiring; and it was wonderful to look on the frail body and believe that it endured the terrible physical and mental strain he imposed ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... I stand to be judged, in the sight of the man Who from purity took a frail woman away. Let him look in my face, if he dare, if he can! Let him stand up on oath to deny what I say! 'Tis a story that many a wife can repeat, From the day that the old curse of Eden began; In the dread name of Justice, look down ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... the water-level, which fringed the headlands with perilous reefs, against which the waves broke continuously at the slightest wind. It required some bravery to approach them, and no little skill to steer one of the frail boats, which these people were accustomed to employ from the earliest times, scatheless amid the breakers. The coasting trade was attracted from Arvad successively to Berytus, Sidon, and Tyre, and finally to the other towns of the coast. It was in full operation, doubtless, from the VIth Egyptian ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... this dread stranger; darkness was round her lot! And he himself had decided her fate and his own! The boat bounded on, the soft waves flashed and sparkled beneath the oars, and it was along one sapphire track of moonlight that the frail vessel bore away the lovers. Farther and farther from his gaze sped the boat, till at last the speck, scarcely visible, touched the side of the ship that lay lifeless in the glorious bay. At that instant, as if by magic, up sprang, with ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... God, my cruel deed! ... 'Twas horrible. 'Twas horrible ... O brother! Did my heart Endure it? ... And things fell Right by so frail a chance; and here thou art. Bloody my hand had been, My heart heavy with sin. And now, what end cometh? Shall Chance yet comfort me, Finding a way for thee Back from the Friendless Strand, Back from the place of death— Ere yet the slayers come And thy blood sink in ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides
... do, indeed. I have often thought so; and I think, too, that the mode of bringing them up is strange: they are not sufficiently guarded from temptation. Girls are protected as if they were something very frail or silly indeed, while boys are turned loose on the world, as if they, of all beings in existence, were the wisest and least liable to be led astray. I am glad you like Broomsgrove, though, I dare say, there are few places you would not ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell |
